Monday, August 14, 2006

RGV's the guest for CNN-IBN "Being" series. In three videos, he talks to Anuradha Sengupta about his films, The Factory, the fallouts with his protégés, the Sholay remake and the new Shiva. RGV's honesty and clarity always make him an interesting interview subject and the questions are free-form. There's an interesting note about the "realism" in his films:

My intelligence is to suck the audience and their psyche into my films. I want them to feel what the character is going through in the film. For example, in Satya when people call it a realistic film I wonder how do they know its real? They don't know anything about underworld neither do I.

It's not so much about the realism in the depiction of the underworld. I think they connect to the character's realism. When Bhikhu Mhatre comes home and his wife nags him, they connect to that emotion. It is because of the same emotion that when he goes out and kills someone, it seems real.

And at the core of it all is what makes this filmmaker special, just like Vishal Bhardwaj, although the latter's had to make some concessions recently: the drive to do what he wants to do, to make the films he wants to make the way he wants to make them.

Anuradha Sengupta: The point is perhaps that you do what you want to do. Isn't it?

Ram Gopal Varma: That is exactly the point.

Anuradha Sengupta: But the question is, how do get people to back you? Because you are one person who has never been at loss of backers.

You have had a good relationship with Jhamu Sugandh, Bharat Shah, the K Sera Sera association and now the Adlab Films. They all seem to be backing you, while all you are doing is pleasing yourself?

Ram Gopal Varma: When there is no sure-shot formula as to what is going to work, why not just do what you are willing to do? I don't think I am taking a risk myself or at the cost of my 'backers'.

Coincidentally, Rediff Movies inaugurated their Seen a Star? series with a photograph of Sengupta and RGV conversing on a bridge during this interview. Eerie.